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Updated: June 18, 2025
Maloney stopped his humming suddenly and turned to his companion. "And what do you make of it all?" he asked abruptly. "In the first place," replied John Silence, making himself comfortable against the rock, "it is of human origin, this animal; it is undoubted lycanthropy." His words had the effect precisely of a bombshell. Maloney listened as though he had been struck.
The history of Nebuchadnezzar and the conversion of Lot's wife were, it is true, eagerly alleged in support of its possibility; but it was impossible to forget that St. Augustine appeared to regard lycanthropy as a fable, and a canon of the Council of Ancyra had emphatically condemned the belief. On the other hand, that belief has been very widely diffused among the ancients.
The following tale, in which the lycanthropy is far from being altogether a mere effort of the imagination, appears to be founded upon the belief in the continued existence of this rare species of madness down to our own day or near it for the story seems to belong to the year 1832.
I was impious, an atheist, a madman, a wild beast, a wolf. The continuator of the Journal of Trevoux was guilty of a piece of extravagance in attacking my pretended Lycanthropy, which was by no means proof of his own. A stranger would have thought an author in Paris was afraid of incurring the animadversion of the police, by publishing a work of any kind without cramming into it some insult to me.
This man afterwards had a daughter whom no venomous serpent could harm, though she had a fatal power over them. I suppose you may remember the statements of old authors about lycanthropy, the disease in which men took on the nature and aspect of wolves. Aëtius and Paulus, both men of authority, describe it.
A correspondent has kindly supplied the following information: "When in Oude in India, twenty-six years ago, we heard of several instances of native babies being carried off out of the villages by she-wolves, and placed with their whelps, and brought up wild there; there was one about when we were there, partially reclaimed, but retaining much of the savage nature imbibed with the wolf's milk, and having been accustomed to go on all-fours i.e., knees and elbows; but I conclude these were not affected with 'Lycanthropy."
The professor, thus graciously reassured, set forth his errand. "I have come to you, Highly Exalted, to inquire your exalted views on the subject of Lycanthropy. Your Exaltedness knows " "Yes, yes," broke in MWAW, "old Teutonic legend. Men become wolves. Strongest and fiercest breed. Eat people up. Frighten everybody. Ravage countryside. Beautiful myth! Teaches power is greatest thing.
Anthony had met a centaur and a faun, a little man with horns growing from his forehead, who were possibly devils, and at all events, at a later period, the "Lives of the Saints" represent evil spirits in the form of animals as not infrequent. Lycanthropy, however, or the transformation of witches into wolves, presented more difficulty.
Bodin must have been delighted with this story, though perhaps as a Protestant he might have vilipended the infallible decision of the Pope in its favor. As for lycanthropy, that was too common in his own time to need any confirmation. It was notorious to all men.
There is no doubt that the missing children were eaten by Jean Grenier, and there is no doubt that in his own mind the halfwitted boy was firmly convinced that he was a wolf. Here the lycanthropy was complete. In the year 1598, "in a wild and unfrequented spot near Caude, some countrymen came one day upon the corpse of a boy of fifteen, horribly mutilated and bespattered with blood.
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